BREAKING: OCTOBER SURPRISE! Trump's billionaire candidate for Georgia governor gets blindsided by an EXPLOSIVE IRS accusation of MAJOR tax cheating, just FIVE DAYS before the election.
Rick Jackson says his fortune is “God’s money.” Trump’s IRS says he’s been playing games with the tax code.
According to the Daily Beast, an IRS court filing from July accuses the Jackson Investment Group, the parent company of the billionaire Republican’s health care empire, of trying to write off the same bad debt that had already been claimed in previous years. “Petitioner is playing a shell game with the alleged Family Christian debt,” the IRS wrote, accusing the company of blurring the lines between different entities and loans to make the paperwork fit.
That case involves about $1.4 million. It’s the small one. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported last week that the IRS is also challenging nearly $54 million in business deductions tied to losses in companies Jackson invested in and has assessed $16 million in penalties.
Jackson, worth an estimated $3 billion, is fighting the claims. His court date is March 2027, three months into the next governor’s term. So, if Georgians elect him on Tuesday, he could be sitting in the governor’s mansion while fighting his own federal government over taxes.
This is the same man who built his campaign around a carefully polished image as a Christian philanthropist. “This is God’s money,” he said recently. “I’m using that money to make a difference in other people’s lives.”
Some of those lives might disagree. The Daily Beast previously reported that one of Jackson’s companies spent years trying to take a couple’s home in a brutal legal fight, and that his subsidiaries paid $5 million to settle claims they exploited workers and broke labor laws. Jackson didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, he can’t decide how close to stand to Trump. In July, he said he wanted to be Trump’s “favorite governor,” just “with a southern tone.” But when Trump rallied in Georgia on Oct. 16, Jackson didn’t mention him once in his own speech. When Trump announced another visit last Saturday, Jackson’s campaign first planned its own separate event before changing course to appear with him, alongside Senate candidate Mike Collins, who’s trailing Jon Ossoff.
At that rally, Jackson warned that Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms would “destroy Georgia,” adding, “Bad mayors make bad governors.”
Here’s a thought: billionaires accused of tax shell games by their own party’s IRS will make EVEN WORSE governors.
Barack Obama was in Georgia Wednesday night calling the election “our last best chance” to rein in Trump. “It’s the circuit breaker in the system,” he said, “and we need to flip it.” With five days left until the elections, it’s time to take his advice.
